![]() The best and worst 8. Wi- Fi routers of 2. It’s been more than 1. IEEE still hasn’t approved the draft standard. If you think Congress moves slowly, you haven’t been tracking the pace at which the IEEE has been considering the draft version of 8. Those engineers could teach our senators and representatives a thing or two about the deliberative process. Not sure what all the fuss is about? Here’s a quick refresher: 8. Wi- Fi gear, including 8. Both of those numbers are physical link rates—real- world data transfers are much lower—but 8. These new routers are backward- compatible, and since they have more powerful radios than previous- generation devices do, they deliver higher throughput and longer range with both 8. If you want a more in- depth look at 8. ![]() Tech. Hive explanation. In the front (from left): Netgear Nightawk, Linksys EA6. A router (or client adapter) marketed as AC1. GHz and 5. GHz frequency bands concurrently. The “AC” indicates that it supports the IEEE 8. GHz) and 8. 02. 1. GHz) hardware, as well as with 8. Loaded with ports and management features. Multi-User Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MU-MIMO) enabled. Speedy throughput performance in testing. The Asus RT-AC88U. People tend to take their home wifi for granted, like their electricity supply: it’s just supposed to be on. But unlike your power, if your wifi stops working, too. GHz and 5. GHz) devices. The “1. 75. 0” designation indicates that the product is capable of sending and receiving three 1. GHz 8. 02. 1. 1b, - g, or - n Wi- Fi network (4. GHz or 5. GHz 8. 02. Wi- Fi network, and three 4. GHz 8. 02. 1. 1ac network. The industry simply rounds up 3. Vendors might also call this type of hardware a 2x. Turbo. QAM uses a more powerful encoding scheme to squeeze an extra 5. Such products are still labeled as 3x. Well, I didn’t flatten them between a pair of wooden rollers, but I did perform a comprehensive evaluation of their performance. First I tested each device as a 2. GHz and 5. GHz 8. Intel Centrino Ultimate- N 6. Wi- Fi adapter. That adapter is a 3x. GHz and 5. GHz frequency bands. Since very few notebooks ship with integrated 8. Wi- Fi adapters, and legacy hardware such as Intel’s Centrino Ultimate- N 6. USB adapter is the easiest way to take full advantage of an 8. If you need to connect more than one client to your 8. PC, an A/V receiver, and an Xbox One—this the most efficient means of doing so, because the bridge has four ethernet ports. In this scenario, you hard- wire the clients to the bridge, and then establish a wireless connection between the bridge and the router. This test is similar to the one using the Linksys bridge, but it enables each router to operate at its maximum speed. ![]()
The one drawback to both scenarios is that the bridge (or the router that you’ve configured as a bridge) needs to plug into a dedicated electrical outlet—it can’t draw power from another networked device. Since each of these new routers is outfitted with at least one USB port (some have two), I also measured their performance as NAS (network- attached storage) devices by connecting a 5. ![]() GB WD My Passport USB 3. With beamforming, the router and the client can exchange information about their respective locations to determine the most effective path over which data should travel. They can then focus and concentrate their signals to use the available bandwidth more efficiently. Both the router and the client must support beamforming for this technique to work, however. Read “All about beamforming” for an in- depth explanation. More- advanced models let you access storage attached to the router from the cloud, and a few even give you the power to access devices connected to the router from the cloud. That means they’re capable of operating networks on both the 2. GHz and 5. GHz bands. The 2. 4. GHz frequency band is exceedingly crowded, but a router’s ability to support it is important because you might have older devices that can operate only on that frequency. If your client device can connect to a 5. GHz network, however, use that instead. It allows them to reach the Internet but prevents them from accessing other PCs or storage devices operating on your network. A guest network is a courtesy that small- business owners can offer their customers, and that individuals and families can offer their visitors. This feature enables the router to stream music and video to client devices on the network. More- advanced routers will also offer a DLNA- certified server (the initialism stands for Digital Living Network Alliance). If you have a DLNA- compatible HDTV, A/V receiver, or other consumer- electronics devices on your network, they’ll be able to stream media from sources such as NAS boxes connected to your router. If you’re an i. Tunes fan, you’ll appreciate having a router with an i. Tunes server. It enables an administrator to establish rules as to when individual computers can access the Internet, and it can block particular websites or even entire categories of sites. If parental controls are the most important feature you want in a router, take a look at Power. Cloud Systems’ Skydog. It’s based on the older 8. I’ve ever seen. Most high- end routers have at least the basics, meaning that the router can analyze traffic being uploaded to the network and can distinguish between lag- sensitive packets (Vo. IP and video Web- chat streams, for instance) and non- lag- sensitive packets (such as file transfers). The router will assign higher priority to the former, to prevent dropouts, and lower priority to the latter (because any dropped packets can be re- sent with little impact). A more advanced router will allow you to customize its Qo. S settings or even permit you to write your own rules. Some routers can also manage downlink traffic and are capable of assigning higher priority to lag- sensitive data streams, such as Netflix streams. You can use one port to share a printer and the other to share storage—in the form of a USB hard drive—among all the computers on your network. Some router manufacturers are taking the step of building a hard drive into the router itself. If you need fast storage, however, you’ll be better served by a dedicated NAS box. Let’s get to the reviews! We regret the error. To comment on this article and other Tech. Hive content, visit our Facebook page or our Twitter feed.
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